29 October 2012

I have chosen to write the book alongside a personal selection of tracks from albums that matter (or don't matter at all but just have to be mentioned) to the international black metal scene, or more general, to an international conglomerate of occult songs or albums. To keep the book readable, I have mixed both the chronological order of things with a more instinctive order, based on the story presented...

The first chapter deals with occult music that existed before black metal was born. I have decided to include compositions of the following classical composers as my starting point: Giuseppe Tartini, Niccolò Paganini, Felix Mendelssohn, Hector Berlioz, Modest Mussorgski, Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, Peter Warlock, and Carl Orff. Surely I could have chosen Wagner, or any other bloke that's in the famous LaVey list of 'Satanic Classics'. Since I find this list ill-informed and incomplete, I have labelled it as being a 'writer's favourites' list.

Surely, darkness is shining through in a lot of compositions, but that's also due to a fair amount of writing skills. Mozart might have been a rebellious odd fellow, writing a great requiem march, but I don't think that it has been born from the occult. On the other hand, I have also included stuff by, Dominique Frontiere (hardly a Mozart, by the way), but I doubt his Pagan Festival album is really rooted deeply in heathen soil. It's possibly his attempt to create 'exotic' music.

I did chose to include field recordings by Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, Alex Sanders, Gerald Gardner, the mass murdering Reverend Jim Jones, and - continuing with infamous cult leaders - also the primitive country ramblings of Charles Manson and his Family.

I also fly past recordings of Sammy Davis Jr., Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, and some voodoo inspired stuff like Screamin' Jay Hawkings and Dr. John. But they are the minor players of the story. The first ones that are obligatory features are blues artists Peetie Wheatstraw and Robert Johnson. This last one laid the foundations for a lot of modern rock, and especially for occult driven bands in these genres - and that includes The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin - because of the famous crossroads legend. It also gives me the opportunity to side-track into material by The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper and Helter Skelter), The Eagles (yes, that's Hotel California and no, it's not Satanic), soundtracks for Invocation of My Demon Brother, Lucifer Rising,and The Omen (remember those intro's from black metal shows back in the early 1990s?), and sect-based releases like that of Ya Ho Wha 13.

The 1960s and 1970s unbottled loads of occult driven music, ranging from folk artists to psychedelic rock to experimental electronic music to hard rock and proto-heavy metal bands; both under the influence of outside the influence of the newly found freedom in psychotropic substances. You can think of bands like Sam Gopal, Dave And Toni Arthur, Donovan, H.P. Lovecraft, Strawberry Alarm Clock, King Crimson, Satan And Deciples, The Gun, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, Burn, Bedemon, Boudewijn de Groot, Jacula, Lucifer, J.D. Blackfoot, Zior, White Noise, Roky Erickson, Bruce Haack, et cetera, who have all contributed in big or small ways to the unexisting genre of 'occult music'. I even managed to squeeze in a bit of Elly & Rikkert somewhere - despite their childrens gospel reputation!

Things all came together in the late 1970s, when more extreme music presented itself as both punk rock (hardcore in the United States) and heavy metal (with the NWoBHM as a powerful representative). The explicity of AC/DC's Highway to Hell, Venom's Welcome to Hell, Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, and Death SS' Horned God of the Witches demo all predated the one album that started it all: Black Metal by Venom, released in late 1982. And that's where the second chapter kicks in...

22 February 2012

Where the Hell do I begin, now I have set my mind to a
task as impossible as this one? That was the first question following some
lunatic idea I had in the summer of 2010; an idea either an epiphany or mad
delirium. After years and years of observing, participating, and anticipating
(and loving and hating) the movements in the global black metal scene as far as
humanly possible, that day I felt the undeniable urge to contribute something
more personal than another objective encyclopaedia. It suddenly unfolded in my
mind, during my lunch break from work, as clear as everything else in the
bright sunlight at the harbour
of Rotterdam: I was to
write a single review that would span the pages of a book. I felt destined to
review the black metal scene as a whole, overflowing with bias and personal
sentiment, decorated with a sarcastic sense of humour, and in that way being the
fully flavoured counterpart-companion of my Encyclopedia;
my first professional venture into the public metal domain on paper (not
counting any lyrics used by bands I had joined or helped, or the
issues of Black Art Magazine I contributed
to – and no, that’s not some trendy webzine but an old-school Xeroxed paper product,
dating back to the early 1990s).

In a strange
way this book started when a colleague from work and I were swapping music (the
cd-r variant of good old tape trading), and I decided to burn him a compilation
with a short history of black metal – a personal selection out of the many
releases that (mis)shaped the scene.

Fascinated with the musical and occult roots
of the music I have been emerged in since I was about twelve years old, I began
to compile a more extensive audible history for private pleasure. Of course, there
is no logical step from a compilation playlist to writing a 120 page review. I
can only say that my mind works in odd ways, and sometimes to my own chagrin,
like in this obsessive case of determination, knowing it would consume lots of
precious time and bother me on the most inappropriate moments. Strangely
enough, I cannot resist it in any way! So a few days later the first words came
oozing out of me, illustrating my playlist.

Also there is this delicious anecdote about the evil seduction
of rock music that should make writing about rock (and metal even more so)
obligatory:

Secular music isn’t as innocent and voluntary as it
seems. An American missionary’s family took a leave from their village duties
and acquired some rock and roll albums. Soon after their return, the village
witchdoctor visited the father of the family. He wanted to know why the family
had abandoned their God. The witchdoctor came to this conclusion after hearing
the rhythmic beat music, which was the same beat he used to summon demonic
spirits.

AGP Alive Bijbelstudie Site (Bible Study Site), chapter “8. Satan” (viewed July 22, 2010). Of course the original source of their quote remains conveniently hidden by the creators of the website.

To keep it short, I will only tell you that on this blog I
have conjured up some of my old writings and essays on (black) metal, included
elements from my encyclopaedia and its website, and threw them in a creative
blender to produce something fresh and worthwhile to read. For lots of people it
contains the same old information found everywhere else. I guess the internet
ruined a lot for non-fiction writers. Others might discover something new or a
fresh way of looking at it. In either case, you will definitely not have read that same-old-shit in the
same-old-way as I present it to you in the coming pages.

21 February 2012

Well, you
might have spotted my name somewhere. I was born October 1974 and grew up, most
of my life, in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.
In this no-bullshit-attitude, down-to-earth, love-it-and-hate-it metropolis my
fascination with metal started after seeing the four painted faces of Kiss on
television in the late 1970s (never remembered any of their music though,
except I Was Made for Loving You and Christine Sixteen; my mom will tell anyone
that asks that as a small toddler only Kiss and Blondie always managed to keep
me glued to the tube). The hard rock of Status Quo (Whatever You Want), Queen (Live
Killers), and Deep Purple (In Rock)
were among the things I liked while growing up. It was in 1986 (for sure, but
it could easily be 1985) that my older nephew Arthur got me hooked on real
metal, starting with Venom’s Eine Kleine
Nachtmusik and Slayer’s Reign in
Blood, followed by their other albums and Carnivore, Kreator, and
Onslaught. I actually skipped the section of heavy metal bands like Iron
Maiden, Manowar, and Black Sabbath, which I discovered later on (with the
exception of a few tracks I put on compilations during my first steps)… From
all those fine thrash metal albums, my attraction to and interest in extreme
music grew rapidly. It was boosted a few years later with my discovery of the
death metal debuts of Death, Obituary, Autopsy, Pestilence, and Morbid Angel,
and the musical extremes of Napalm Death’s Scum
and Carcass’s Reek of Putrefaction
(to name the most vivid examples). Still, they were a relatively long step away
from black metal.

Since the
first years in the 1990s, when legendary albums by Samael, Blasphemy, Beherit,
Darkthrone, and Deicide (yes, they deserved to be among them!) were released,
the new wave of black metal immediately caught my main interest, and I started
investigating the music, ideology, and history of that particular segment. This
lead to a renewed exploration in metal releases of the past, where I discovered
many of the music gems I will highlight in the coming pages. I also saw a
growing Dutch underground I could roam around in, with dark acts like Funeral
Winds, Apator, Countess, Inverted Pentagram, and Bestial Summoning. Black metal
evolved into an ever-present passion since then. In 1995, after three years of
aimless experimentation with my bass guitar in- and outside of bands, my
fascination made me team up with the commercially inclined black metal band
Liar Of Golgotha, in which I played guitar for almost four years and wrote lots
of lyrics. From there on, I moved to more extreme and obscure things with four
years of old-school black metal in Funeral Winds (still a highlight; a full
100% my kind of music), four years of more contemporary black metal in
Israthoum, and finally laying low (note: not retiring!) with the Coldeemstorft
and Veghe projects (which are still part of my life; as a matter of fact,
Coldeemstorft recorded its debut release during the creation of the book that gave
birth to this blog).

With the
academic skills I picked up in the marginal section Cultural Sciences of the Rotterdam
University, where I graduated early 2003, I began exploring the internet,
interviewing people around me, purposefully expanding my social network, and
combining heaps of research material, just so I could bring you my debut book The Encyclopedia of Dutch Black Metal.
But since writing one book is the same as writing nothing at all, here I am again
marking a bit of metal territory (even though it’s a blog to begin with!)…

I start off with a warning: you will most likely hate
what’s on this blog (and consequently me, the author) for slandering your
favourite band or release, for supporting the wrong bands, for revealing some
ugly truths (or beautiful lies), or for whatever other ‘personal’ offense you
will read in it! Every choice I make will piss someone off, so I decided early
on to go no-holds-barred on this.

Ever since I realised the first pressing of The Encyclopedia of Dutch Black Metal
people have been asking me about my own views on the whole black metal
phenomenon. Even though I have relatively clear opinions on black metal, I am
against expressing them in an encyclopedia, first because of the objectivity of
the undertaking and therefore my objectivity as its writer / researcher, and
second because opinions can be fine-tuned or altered over time. Any view given
now can become irrelevant in the future, when a radical influential aspect has
unveiled itself or a new and accepted influence has challenged, and perhaps
changed the scene.

There are people that believe that associating with
metal music and its accompanying ‘culture’ is a sin belonging to youth, and
when you grow older you get ‘smarter’ and start looking into safer, tamer, homely,
more ‘intelligent’ forms of music. As a result some people drift off to A.O.R.
(Adult Orientated Rock; the
Valium-laced and castrated brother of regular rock music; probably lost their
balls together with their long hair) or find delight in safely eccentric popular
bands from their early metal-years (I guess that might be Kraftwerk, Talking
Heads, Soft Cell, Prince, Yello, Nina Hagen, Queen, and Beastie Boys for me). They
deny or trivialize the fact that they liked Slayer for many years and had hair
longer than their wives have. “That’s history, I was just a stupid kid back
then,” is what they say in that light-hearted apologetic tone we have all heard
more than once in all kinds of different situations. There is a word for that,
and that word is Betrayal. And that betrayal is not only targeting the music
and its (former / current) fans, but in yourself as well.

It’s what I
found in a Dutch ‘New Age’ magazine that summons it up quite nicely:

Once you sell out your rebel heart you’re lost. You
will conform yourself more and more as time goes on and the music you once
loved will move further and further away from you. You outgrow the music
because your heart closes itself from it, and your mind takes over. But your
mind knows it needs music, and it will provide you with material from a more
popular genre. This will work for you, but you will never feel the burning
passion and intense happiness as you did in those good old days.

If you read this introduction and think: hey man, I’m
a fan of A.O.R. and there’s nothing wrong with it at all, maybe you’ve
neglected to look into your briefs for a while: this book is not for you! But
if you think, I don’t mind the hair, but -shit- I’ve lost my gonads as well somewhere
along the line, this book might put you back on track and give you a chance to grow
them back. You may even discover you’ve missed a whole world of unruly dark
pleasures passing by, and grow yourself two sets, just to be sure… Even though
my own musical preferences have passed the boundaries of good/bad taste at
points (I do listen to more than (black) metal; possibly to the chagrin of some
of the scene’s tight-assed ‘elitists’ that think they nailed the point of being
‘true’ black metal), I will probably never be able to shake my allegiance with
metal music. I can say that my balls are still intact!

The Rules to this Blog

I am publishing info on my new book on this blog. I’ve taken it out of its natural order and made it a bit 'interactive' for everyone reading it. I might have been inspired (and perhaps guided) by what you have given me as feedback, and put it somewhere in the manuscript. It's currently read by a second test reader, and is waiting completion on of its several topics.

My rules are these:
1. If you want to be taken seriously, write intelligent comments in English, and make yourself known to me. When the time comes to put it all back together, I can make the correct references and give credit where credit’s due.
2. If you’re active in the scene, don’t promote your own sh*t, unless it’s really inevitable. The blog’s not a commercial billboard. I'm endorsing my own opinion here, exclusively.
3. This blog is not a discussion forum either or a place to post useless comments.
I stress my right to delete anything I cannot use!